Animal Padre's
Christians Against All Animal Abuse "Christ’s redemption is for the whole of creation!"

NewslettersSummer 2012

The penalty of ignoring the cultivation of compassion

Several times recently, while walking through the shopping centres
of two local sea resorts, I found youngsters chasing after inoffensive
birds. Pigeons were being shooed off until they flew away through fear
of being trapped; while seagulls - receiving the same cruel treatment
- had become vulnerable through paper wrappings - containing half
consumed burgers! - having been left near open waste bins.

Then a few days later, while walking around the delightful Marine Lake
in sunny Rhyl, Doreen and I were horrified to find three similar
youngsters. These had caught, what appeared to be, baby crabs in a
fishing net. Indeed, as one youngster was busily stamping on one, the
other was anxious to say to us: “Look at what we’ve found!” He then
held it up high in the air; twisting one of it’s tiny feet in the
process; then dropped it and, as it struggled to get away, he turned
it over on to its’ back and prodded it while the creature was unable
to right itself. Meanwhile a young lady, with toddlers, after having
looked on before we arrived, walked away saying nothing..

What
so deeply perturbed us was that none of these parents or youngsters
seemed to sense that such creatures were panacking for their lives and
desperate to return to their safe habitat. Then, when I intervened and
tried to explain that these tiny creatures had feelings and could feel
pain such as we do; yes, and that – but for God’s goodness - we could
have been born in their type of body, one of the youngsters shrugged
his shoulders and replied: “but we are not!” However, when I then
suggested that our future punishment might well be to come back next
time, in the form of life we’ve most cruelly treated in this present
one, then these youngsters became a little troubled. One by one, they
cast those tiny creatures back in to the water. I smiled to them and
they smiled back.

Yes, I think we’d made those young people at
the waterside think, and I can hardly criticize them for their
previous lack of sensitivity. However, what I do blame is the
appallingly lop sided educational system which our average school
stands for. Indeed, before any other subject taught, top priority
should surely be given to cultivating compassion, care and protection
of weaker and more vulnerable forms of life than one’s own. For
- without top agenda being given to such basic virtues - secular
orientated education merely passes on the tools to little rascals so
as to turn them in to horrendously large ones. Well, Heaven forbid!